The jubilation with which South Africa's first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was received was on a par with winning the Rugby World Cup in 1995. But Fugard admits that he wasn't watching the Oscar ceremony when the award was announced—he was watching an adaptation of one of his favourite Queens of Crime, Dorothy L Sayers: "What is it about women that they can write such clever murders?"

Viruses have many of the characteristics of living things, but not all of them. Like living things, viruses have genes and proteins and can evolve. However, they cannot reproduce on their own. Instead, they must infect living things.

I need to traverse about a hundred yards of lifeless sand before I am out of sight of the camp. I seem to be the only living thing in the shimmering heat, the temperature well above 400C. I encounter the straggling growth of a small bitter gourd, Colocynthus, and one grass plant, Cenchrus, with dried up leaves and spiny seeds. But nothing moves. It is the time of day in the desert when it makes sense to be completely still.

In my quiet hometown by the Delaware River, the peace was irrelevant but the rage, tempered perhaps by distance and suburban comfort, was still there in my Egyptian father. In 1973 he listened to accounts of the wars on shortwave radios. In 1977 he sat in awe on the big chair in front of the television as the CBS Evening News showed Jimmy Carter coaxing Israel and Egypt to shake hands and make promises they likely wouldn't keep. Ever since I could remember, he would whisper "Palestine" when the newsman said "Israel."